Binary
Michael Crichton (writing as John Lange)
The Meat
I have previously written on this blog about my admiration
for hacks. Hacks are like session musicians: their job is to produce efficiently and effectively. And well. And often. Some of my heroes are hacks. Mark Twain was a hack. So was Chet Atkins.
Michael Crichton was in medical school when he wrote his
first novels. Medical school. How he managed to write a single novel while in med school is beyond me—I can
barely write my dissertation and that’s all I have to do. But he wrote them. Binary is the second that I personally
have read. (Full disclosure: It’s also the second Crichton novel that I have
ever read.) This was an enjoyable novel, plot and nothing more. Crichton shows expertise
in pacing and suspense, moving the story along to a somewhat forgettable conclusion.
But I enjoyed getting there.
Crichton's hackery, in other words, was evident even as a student.
The story: It’s 1972. Millionaire playboy and wannabe
terrorist John Wright plots to kill President Nixon—and much of the population
of San Diego—with VX nerve gas. John Graves is an intelligence agent out to
stop him. They’re both unstable geniuses, so there’s a lot of outwitting and
attempted outwitting at the heart of the story.
This is a humble novel, not promising more than what it can deliver, which was an enjoyable Sunday afternoon. There’s little character development,
with Crichton cleverly slipping enough background information on the rivals at
the center of Binary to give the story a bit of dramatic flavor. The book is mostly plot, each scene’s sole purpose being to move story forward. A couple of
moments did feel forced and, in contrast with the rest of the book, wordy. Particularly
the lecture on VX nerve gas—though I did learn something.
The writing here is largely economical, just enough
description and dialogue to push through to the conclusion. Crichton’s age
shows—he’s still learning here—but there’s also clear expertise and skill
demonstrated throughout this book. Crichton had certainly developed his craft in the five years
between Binary and Scratch One, which I reviewed here a few
weeks back. Binary is also more than
thirty pages shorter than the earlier novel. One point bonus. (But I’m
penalizing the book one point for the villain’s erectile difficulty as the cause
of his terrorist behavior. The vague John-Wright-is-mad-about-China thing didn’t
really make sense, but still…)
And it should be noted that there were very few instances of
actual violence in the story and only a handful of guns. Bravo.
The Math
Objective score: 7/10
Bonuses: +1 for very few guns; +1 for being only 220 pages
Penalities: -1 for impotence
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10
